Word: elkin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Even if that accusation is true, this powerful collection of three short novels deserves every bit of attention it can get. The title does, after all, describe the book perfectly; the three novellas are linked thematically by it. More precisely, it is the breaking of search and seizure laws. Elkin's heros are badmen, who justify their acts through mixed-up metaphysical rules reflecting all of the saturnalian immediacy of today's politics. At the same time, they express deeper strains of human nature which will ensure Elkin's place among the best of modern novelists...
...STANLEY ELKIN...
...Boswell, A Bad Man and The Dick Gibson Show, Stanley Elkin demonstrated lavish verbal and comic gifts, a generosity of spirit and a talent for staging extravaganzas of the absurd. If his plots lurched and his ideas went off like random flares, Elkin's characters commanded attention because of the manic way they acted out their necessities...
...Searches & Seizures, a collection of three novellas, each Elkin hero obeys his needs with results that vary from the bitterly funny to the preposterous and pathetic. Alexander Main of The Bail-bondsman is a kind of clawlike extension of the law's arm-a bondsman who pursues his work with outrageous devotion. A typical Elkin creation, Main promotes himself to legendary status, invoking history, philosophy and myth until he seems like a burlesque Mephistopheles to petty criminals...
...When his father dies, he seems driven by some homing instinct to move into the dead man's condominium apartment in Chicago. It is a terrible mistake. The young man finds himself disastrously enmeshed in the crotchets and suffocating propriety of the older residents. The story proves that Elkin, one of America's most inventive comic writers, is also adept at old-fashioned realism...